Hi!
Thank you to everyone who left reviews this past week. I haven't caught up to replying yet but I read and treasure them all.
Alice's White Rabbit, Midnight Cougar and SunflowerFran wield the red pens. RobsmyyummyCabanaboy and Deh are my plot coaches and shoulders to cry on. I am a tinkerer, though, so any errors left are my own boo-boos.
So, everyone seems to have liked the Admiral, and the consensus seems to be that Edward was kinda getting paranoid about nothing. But who are we kidding, Edward's middle name is "overthink", so of course he would. :)
What are these crazy kids up to next? Well, here we go!
See you on the flip side. Enjoy!
BUSINESS CLASS GIRL – Chapter 33
Edward
Thoughts of my first meeting with the Admiral continue to course through my mind after I sit back down at the table. It went much better than I'd imagined. The man himself departed not ten minutes ago, but he sure left an impression and has given me lots to think about.
Hot on Charlie's heels, Russell—sly old coot—left as well after handing Bella a mysterious envelope she promptly hid in her black hole of a handbag as if it were the code to break an Enigma machine.
I'm still baffled by the fact Russell and Charlie have been friends for decades, and so have my dad and Russell, yet despite this and the other multiple connections between Bella's orbit and mine, our worlds never collided until a year ago.
Bella reappears in her seat beside me from her trip to the ladies' loo with a small, knowing smile.
"He likes you, you know," she says, threading her hand with mine.
"He tolerates me for your sake." "Like" might be a strong word for Admiral Charles Francis Archibald McCarty-Swan.
"For your information, the Admiral doesn't 'tolerate' people. But, hey, whatever floats your boat."
"You float my boat," I counter, taunting her with a sly smile of my own, my voice full of too much mischief for such a public, posh venue.
"Not this afternoon. Stuff to do." She's got me pegged.
"I'd rather do you than stuff." I might be on the verge of pouting to get my way. With her.
"The feeling is mutual, EC. But I need to be somewhere in half an hour, and it's the only time they could meet me. It's unditchable."
"Unditchable? Is that even a word?" How the hell does she come up with this shit?
"If I say so, it is." Uh-oh. This is the voice I've labelled "Professor Swan" in my dirty mind. If the nerdy glasses make an appearance, I will not be responsible for my actions.
Down, Cullen. The Admiral can still send you to a watery grave.
"Now I'm intrigued, love. Where is it that you're off to?"
"We are off to Lincoln's Inn Library."
Lincoln's Inn Fields—Inns of Court. Associations of ideas in my brain conjure up pictures of barristers and solicitors in black robes and horsehair wigs lugging bundles of briefs and motions as they stride from courtroom to courtroom. Harrowing scenes from Dickensian novels with portly justices handing down sentences. Decades-long disputes before the Courts of Chancery—wills, wives, and wrecks, or so the old adage went. What is my BCG up to?
"Isn't that a very lawyerly place?"
"So lawyerly you can't get a foot in the door unless you're a member of the bar, which I am not, last I checked."
Semantics. I've seen her mark up my contracts and flag issues Angela herself had failed to spot. She could give a few Hollywood lawyers hell with a few strokes of her red pen.
Mmm, Cullen. Strokes.
"They should let you in on your merits alone. Why do you need to go there anyway?"
She glances at her phone screen and moves to stand.
"Let's walk over there while I explain. I can't be late. Not today."
She always makes it a point of being on time, early even—an entirely warranted concern, since she carts yours truly around on a daily basis, and my track record on punctuality speaks for itself.
This is different, though. There's a light in her eyes I've seen a few times, and she's almost vibrating with anticipation.
As we walk out of the restaurant and onto the busy streets, I wrap an arm around her waist to keep her close while we meander through the crowd. It feels fucking fantastic to be here, in my hometown, walking with my girl beside me.
"I thought I'd use some of our time here to do some research … for my book."
That's where I've spotted this light in her eyes before—when she's writing. And now she's making me a part of this without me even asking.
"I'm even more intrigued, love. Tell me more."
"There are a few places I need to check out. The first two are accessible enough to mortals …" She trails off, leading me down a side street lined with dusty legal bookstores.
"And what would those be?"
"The British Museum and the National Archives. Lincoln's Inn was a tougher nut to crack. Russell pulled some strings for me and booked me a couple hours with the head librarian there. If you think you will be bored out of your skull …" She pauses, suddenly unsure, as we come to a stop in a green, pristine square garden surrounded by Gothic-looking buildings.
"I'm going to be stuck for hours in a silent, old, stuffy library right off the pages of a Victorian novel. I might be awful company, if at all. I will probably forget you're even there and start murmuring nonsensical stuff to myself for the next three hours. If you want to take off and meet me later, I'll understand. I can be a real nerd when I fall down one of my rabbit holes," she admits.
There is no choice to be made here. I'd rather be bored with her—which I doubt I will be, anyway—than without her, first of all. Then there's the gigantic added bonus of seeing her in her element, in the zone. Sharing this moment with her will be like having a front seat to how her brain works.
"I'm in. I promise I won't be a nuisance. I'll be good."
We're navigating temporary access walkways that weave around construction works tearing apart most of the courtyard around the Gothic building of the Great Library of Lincoln's Inn. We follow signs after signs, finally find our bearings, and head up a grand staircase.
After pushing through an imposing access door, we're in, stepping into another world.
The walls are panelled with crimson silk, frayed and faded with age in some corners. A massive carved oak table buttresses the length of the open area in the entryway. Rows of shelves filled to the brim with books and bundles of ancient documents flood the halls to the left and to the right. Marble busts of serious blokes with ominous frowns look down on us from their perches on the walls. The distinct smell of leather and old paper permeates the air. A few people are scattered here and there amongst the stacks, but silence reigns sovereign, almost deafening.
My girl is taking this all in, wide-eyed, with a beaming smile like a kid on Christmas morning. I suddenly feel out of place. Without a shadow of a doubt, this is her world, not mine.
A grandmotherly figure coughs from her spot behind the counter. She reminds me of my elementary school teacher.
"Access to barristers only, folks. May I help you?"
Bella walks up to her. "Good afternoon, ma'am. Isabella Swan," she starts, extending her hand and a piece of paper to the librarian. "I'm here to consult papers for research purposes. I have a letter of introduction …"
The lady peruses the letter and cuts her off with a smile. "From Mr Devlin, I take it? Shelley Cope, dear. Nice to meet you," she replies, shaking Bella's hand in return.
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I hope it's no trouble?"
"For a protégée of Mr Devlin? Never. Now, let me know what it is you're after so I can help you."
Bella quickly leafs through her notebook to find the page she needs. "The Black Books from 1845 to 1855. Property records, same time span. And I have a list of cases from the Hale Collection?"
Mrs Cope nods, handing Bella a clipboard. I want to take a peek but try to remain in the background, doing my damnedest to remain inconspicuous.
"That is all in order, dear. Please sign these forms right here. I'll go get those papers for you while you get settled in at one of the tables in the reading room. No mobile phone use in the library, but you may use your laptop or tablet for note-taking. Of course, none of these papers you're after are ever eligible for check-out, but you may get copies of whatever you need."
Bella flashes her notebook and fountain pen to the old lady, who replies with a congenial smile again, shattering all my long-standing preconceptions about librarians being related to Cerberus or worse.
My girl cocks her head at me to follow her, and we find a table at the back of the reading room, which is thankfully almost empty.
About fifteen minutes later, Mrs Cope comes back with an armful of massive leather-bound ledgers.
"I got you the Black Books first; they're easiest to retrieve. The rest will come up from the stacks in a bit. I took the liberty of getting a pair of these for you, dear, in case you don't have your own," she says, passing Bella a pair of plain cotton gloves.
When she leaves, Bella dons the gloves, and then the sexy nerdy specs make an appearance. I'm not sure I'll be able to behave if she keeps this up for three hours straight.
She starts poring through the ledgers, running her fingers down the pages, skimming over every line. My girl is on a mission. After a good twenty minutes of this, a quiet cry of triumph startles me out of my daze.
"Yes! I found it!"
"What?" I ask in a stage whisper, forgetting all about the script I fished out of her Mary Poppins-sized bag to pass the time without badgering her too much.
"The Black Books record the proceedings of the Inns of Court and all admissions to the bar from 1422 to 1965. I needed names from a specific family, and I knew a few of them went into the law," she replies, her voice almost a reverent whisper while she jots down names and dates on a ginormous diagram with multiple creases and folds she just popped out of a side pocket of her notebook.
"Is that a family tree, love?"
"Yes, EC. I'm filling in the blanks."
I can almost taste the unadulterated pride in her voice at her discovery. I can't but feel that pride myself, knowing this whip-smart lady is mine to keep.
"You're going all Indiana Jones on me, Professor Swan. I love it."
"Not bored out of your skull yet?"
Let's see. Sexy nerdy glasses, lawyerly old books, and my girl veering into legal detective/treasure hunter territory? I'm wondering if I can steal her away to a dark corner to show her just how not bored I am.
"Not remotely, love. It's utterly fascinating to see you like this. I'm just going to sit tight and ogle you. The whole time."
Turnabout is fair play—she gets to ogle me while I work, after all.
"I need to work, though, you adorable dork," she counters with a level, serious look, "not get chased out of here because I'm wearing nerdy glasses, and you can't keep your hands to yourself."
Busted.
When I'm about to formulate a witty repartee, Mrs Cope returns with oodles more documents, this time on a modern library cart that sticks out like a sore thumb among these hallowed halls of learning.
"These are the cases from the Hale Collection, dear."
Bella flexes her fingers and dons the cotton gloves again after Mrs Cope turns on her heels to leave.
"Hale Collection? As in, Jasper Hale-Whitlock?" I ask, quirking an eyebrow at my sudden realisation.
She shrugs, leafing through the yellowed bundles. "A Matthew Hale was the Chief Justice in the 1600s. When he died, he bequeathed his personal library of cases and rare books to Lincoln's Inn. He might be an ancestor, but I don't know for certain. You'll have to ask Jasper."
I don't even want to contemplate how she knows that single scrap of information off the top of her head.
"I thought boredom would be the worst of my problems this afternoon. You're killing me here, love."
She slides her specs down the bridge of her nose to throw me an innocent glance over the rim of the frame that is slowly becoming the bane of my existence and causing an extremely tight situation in my nether regions.
"Am I? I'm up to my eyeballs in 200-year-old documents, Edward."
"And you have no idea how sexy and tantalising it is to see you like this. I'd jump you right here, if I could get away with it."
She sighs. "I bet the tabloids would love it. Picture the headlines. 'Cullen passes the bar and lowers his pants—Superior acting between the stacks,'" she ends with a snicker.
"I'll get back to my boring script. But you owe me, Professor Swan."
A suit sitting a couple tables away turns towards us to shush us with a loud hiss.
Bella, chastised, elbows me in the ribs and mouths, "Sorry," to the suit, whose eyes get wide as saucers when his gaze lands on yours truly.
The return of Mrs Cope brings Bella's attention back to her task while I pretend to read my script.
"Isabella, dear, I may have found something else for you," she says, dropping another bundle of documents on the library cart. It lands with a hollow thud and a mild dust cloud.
Bella immediately rises from her seat to start leafing through the latest treasure trove.
"What am I looking at exactly, Mrs Cope?"
"The Hale Collection case files and other papers were never catalogued very scientifically, let's say. We do have an index, but it's sketchy at best. When I saw your list of cases, one rang a bell. There's a derivative dispute under another rubric—heaven knows why. This is it."
"Maliphant v. Mompesson? It's a property dispute by the looks of it, isn't it?"
"Exactly. From 1848. A contested right of way on an estate. Mompesson's estate."
Bella's eyes are now as wide as saucers, as if she just found the Holy Grail.
"Mompesson? 1848? Holy moly. Thank you, Mrs Cope. Could I get copies of this, please?"
"With pleasure, dear. We have those digitised, too. The whole lot?"
"The whole property dispute, yes. Thank you."
She begins tapping her fountain pen on the cover of her notebook while Mrs Cope gathers up the sheaf of closely written, brittle papers back into their folder. When Mrs Cope turns to leave, Bella stops her.
"Mrs Cope, a question, if I may?"
"But of course, dear. Whatever you need."
"Where would I find copies—if they were ever kept—of exhibits, briefs, and pleadings filed in a Chancery suit brought in 1855?"
Mrs Cope deposits the heavy case file with a weird name on the next table ahead of us and takes a seat in front of Bella.
"Chancery, you say? What was the dispute about?"
"A disputed codicil to a will. Mompesson's will."
Mrs Cope nods, pensive, tapping her index finger to her chin. "National Archives at Kew Gardens. They took in all the surviving records from the Court of Chancery before its Victorian reform. You're in luck; records from the 1800s are relatively complete, mostly digitised, and meticulously indexed. I know some of the people there; let me make some phone calls for you."
"This is amazingly helpful, Mrs Cope. Thank you. And please don't go to all that trouble for me …"
Mrs Cope cuts her off. "Nonsense, dear. Mr Devlin would have my head if I didn't. Sit tight. I'll be back."
When she leaves, Bella flops back down on her seat with a megawatt smile on her face. It's the I just won an Oscar kind of grin or, in her case, the I made the top 10 NY Times Bestseller list.
How—that's unclear to good old me. So far, I just know it involves a metric ton of legal jargon that has me climbing the walls in a futile attempt to ward off a stiffy in the middle of a library where I'm not even supposed to be.
"Spit it out, EC. I can see the question mark over your head," she whispers, scribbling away in her notebook in that neat script of hers.
There's a distinct possibility even her handwriting turns me on, and I still have enough balls to admit it.
"What did I just witness there, Professor Swan? In plain English?"
"A 'codicil' is legalese for a post-scriptum to a will. An afterthought, if you will. Back in the olden days, when they were contested, the disputes went to …"
"Chancery—wills, wives, and wrecks. I read Bleak House. You're way more intriguing than Lady Dedlock, love."
She sneaks in a soft kiss to my lips. I groan because she's gone before I can respond. Right. Library.
"This is where Jasper would say you're not just a pretty face. This family of crazy fools I'm researching had a huge estate in Surrey—it was in the family for centuries. Then, mysteriously, in the 1860s, the family disappeared, as if they'd all died out, and the estate was sold off in chunks for a pittance. Based on the info I found, my money is on the codicil."
Now it all makes sense—the property records, the family tree. She's tracing their history through legal records. It's even better than Indiana Jones. It's a cross between Indy and Sherlock.
"As the root of all evil, you mean?"
She nods. "It's funny you mentioned Bleak House. The story is similar. The dispute over the codicil caused a tectonic rift in the family and ate up the estate. It's plot bonanza for a writer."
Family dispute. Land grab. Money. Legal wrangles. I'm not a writer, but I know a thing or two about plots that work. She struck gold here. Even more—this is screen-worthy. It screams drama.
"Fucking hell, love. You could give Ken Follett a run for his money. At the risk of repeating myself, let the record reflect that seeing you do research is the hottest thing I've ever seen. I'm still contemplating stealing you away behind the stacks over there."
She elbows me again, but licks her lips. I'm getting to her.
"Give me an hour. Tops."
"And then what?"
"Well, it looks like I owe you, Mr Cullen, don't I?"
"That you do, Professor Swan. I can't wait."
She winks from behind the sexy, nerdy specs.
This girl will be the death of me.
Inns of Court Library - access IS reserved to lawyers (solicitors and barristers in the UK), which is why Bella needs an assist from Russell to access it. There was indeed construction work ongoing in 2018/2019 when I wrote this chapter. It is currently closed due to lockdown rules in the UK.
The detail about the Matthew Hale being a Chief Justice in the 1600s is accurate. There are details on that on the library's website. ("You can Google it").
The "wives, wills and wreck" adage Edward mentions refers to the "old" purview of the Courts of Chancery (which no longer exist after a couple of Victorian times overhauls of English courts). To be exact, they dealt with wives (marriage portions, dowry issues, and the like-not divorces, because until after WW1 those were a matter for Parliament), wills (disputes over inheritance matters) and wrecks (aka, shipwrecks and disputes over cargo and such).
Edward also refers to Bleak House, a Dickens novel that revolves around a decades-long last will and testament dispute in Chancery and the long-lasting, devastating effects it had on the people affected by it. It was turned into a majestic BBC production of the same name in the early 2000s. Gillian Anderson of X Files fame played the leading character, Lady Dedlock.
Bella mentions a property dispute - Maliphant v. Mompesson. It is a fictional dispute, but I borrowed the names from a fantastic, if complicated novel set during Victorian times: Charles Palliser's The Quincunx. Here too, the story revolves around five families, a disputed codicil to a will, and the havoc the dispute and the codicil wreaked on the families. Fascinating story.
The National Archives ARE at Kew Gardens. Currently closed due to lockdown.
See you all next week!